Senegal便り(Part2)

Hello, this is Ayaka, an M2 student taking a break and working in Senegal as a JICA volunteer right now. As Yuki wrote in the last entry, I would like to write about my life here. It has been almost one year and the half of my stay has already finished. Recently, many demonstrations are carried out in Senegal. This is because many people are against the participation of current president for the election which will be conducted in this weekend. I hope that Senegal will keep in peace…
As I mentioned in my last entry, I teach music, P.E. and drawing in the elementary schools here. In Senegal, there are not many teachers who conduct those subjects in the class, even though these subjects are part of examinations to go to a junior high school. Some teachers don’t think that artistic education are not much important and think that teaching those subjects is difficult because of the lack of materials and their skills.
In the last December, I organized a small seminar with another JICA volunteer to promote artistic education. In the seminar, we planned all with local teachers and asked some of them to do the demonstration. It was relatively small seminar but it was a big challenge for us because as mentioned before, many teachers don’t teach artistic education in the school but we wanted teachers to know that it is interesting and not difficult, so we conducted in this way. Thanks to many cooperative teachers, after the seminar the participants talked to me that it was really fun and interesting. I am planning to organize the same type of seminar in April or May if I can. And I hope that even after I go back to Japan, the seminar will be conducted by the hands of local teachers. Also, in the preparation with local teachers and inspectors who work for the educational committee of the province, I learned a lot and thought a lot about the meaning of international cooperation and technical cooperation. I couldn’t have thought in this way if I hadn’t come here.
In the last year, I tried to teach artistic education on my own in the class but currently, I am trying to persuade local teachers to teach those subjects and I help them a little. Thanks to my cooperative teachers, I think that some teachers start to think that artistic education is interesting and very important for them. What I can do here is not much but I try my best!